MERRITT — On a campaign swing through south central B.C. Tuesday, B.C. Liberal Leader Christy Clark stepped up her last-minute war against the shipment of thermal coal through ports on the B.C. Coast.

Clark launched the drive just last week, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to implement the ban. But in the absence of any action by Ottawa, Clark now says if the Liberals are re-elected, they will take immediate action on their own.

Though the B.C. Liberal cabinet crafted the move in retaliation to the U.S. decision to impose punitive duties on softwood lumber imports from Canada, the premier confirmed that the mechanism would apply equally to thermal coal from Canadian provinces as well as trans-shipments from the U.S.

She also announced the mechanism — a special carbon levy that would be imposed by regulation under the provincial Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act.

The premier made the announcement during an early morning stop at NMV lumber, a family-owned, non-union mill that employs 20 people in Merritt, one of the main communities in the swing riding of Fraser Nicola.

Surrounded by members of the workforce — and incumbent MLA Jackie Tegart who is in a tough re-election fight with former NDP MLA Harry Lali — Clark said the move against thermal coal was part of her party’s determination to stand up to the rising protectionist drive under new President Donald Trump.

“Ideally, the federal government will act on our request to ban thermal coal in our ports — but if they don’t, British Columbia will charge a carbon levy on it,” was the quote attributed to Clark in the government news release.

“By doing so, British Columbia will establish the world’s first greenhouse gas benchmark for thermal coal — and make it uncompetitive to ship through B.C. ports.”

The regulation targeting thermal coal would drive up the price by roughly $70 a tonne according to Clark.

She justified singling out thermal coal — used in the coal-fired generating plants — over metallurgical coal — used in the making of steel — because the thermal product accounts for significantly greater emissions of greenhouse gases.

But it is also the case that B.C. mines produce mostly metallurgical coal. Virtually all of the thermal coal shipped through the province comes from elsewhere, mainly the U.S. state of Wyoming and the province of Alberta, as well as Saskatchewan.

Clark confirmed the levy will apply to shipments from other Canadian provinces as well as the U.S., lest the American shippers initiate trade action on the grounds of unfair treatment.

“The levy will account for the emissions from the extraction, processing, transportation and combustion of thermal coal handled by B.C. terminals,” Clark told reporters during a media scrum at the mill.

But of those four activities, only the transportation occurs within provincial boundaries. The extraction, processing and combustion occurs elsewhere, meaning Clark is intending to impose a carbon levy on emissions-producing activities in other jurisdictions — mainly Wyoming and Alberta in the case of the first two, and the Asian countries where it will be used to generate power in the latter.

Still the Liberals insist the province has both the power and the jurisdiction to apply the levy outside its borders.

Clark was also asked about the precedent she would be setting by penalizing shipments to the country’s ports of raw materials from other land-locked provinces.

But she brushed that aside as if the question had come from the New Democrats.

“Ultimately wouldn’t it be great if Canadians were mining only clean coal and shipping out clean coal to Asia?” said Clark. “We all need to be concerned about climate change.

“In Alberta they say they are. Here’s an opportunity for them to make sure we all join together.”

Clark’s increasingly strident rhetoric on the issue indicates this is no longer simply a bargaining chip in the budding trade war with the U.S.

She is determined to make the ban permanent, as part of the fight against climate change.

But even if one thinks that it would be a good thing if we all joined hands together to stop mining and shipping that nasty thermal coal, shouldn’t that leadership come from the national government and the prime minister? As opposed to an opportunistic provincial premier in the midst of an election campaign?

And as has been noted in this space before, Canada’s ports belong to the whole country, landlocked provinces as well as those smugly positioned on the coast.

There are enough interprovincial trade barriers in the balkanized economy as it is. Should one province be able to penalize exports it doesn’t like as a matter of political grandstanding?

Spare a thought for Alberta’s New Democratic Party Premier Rachel Notley.

She’s discouraged party members from working for an NDP victory in B.C. because John Horgan wants to block further shipments of Alberta oil to the West Coast. Now she finds that the leader of the other main party is angling to block Alberta from shipping its coal as well.

If retaliation is to be the game, how long before Alberta decides to slap duties or regulatory barriers on B.C. products moving eastward?

Still the premier is in full flight toward election day, hoping that her decision to stand tall on softwood, Trump and thermal will close the deal with the electorate and give her another term.

Perhaps it will. But as with many other Clark initiatives you have to wonder if she’s thought through all the implications of a decision made on the fly.

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